Climate change, peak oil and all the other unfolding crises associated with pollution and resource depletion are all symptoms of one problem. There has been a fundamental change in the relationship between people and the Earth. We no longer have new frontiers to expand into when resources get scarce or our waste becomes intolerable. This change marks the maturity of the human species. Well-being now requires an equally fundamental change in how we manage our societies.
As long as the goal of expanding production and consumption is considered legitimate, we are in danger of overshooting planetary limits and collapsing. When sustainability gains legitimacy, as our primary goal, the possibility will emerge for evolving a mature social form, capable of long-term well-being. It is a Question of Direction.
"Enough" is the cue indicating physical maturity. A caterpillar spends its entire life gathering natural resources and growing. When it is big enough, it stops growing and undergoes a change of purpose. The butterfly that emerges from its cocoon is beautiful, it lives very lightly on the Earth, sipping the nectar of flowers, and its primary purpose is to launch the next generation.
This image speaks to a sustainable future. If we were to gather our satisfaction from the beauties of life and use the material world primarily to provide nutritious food and energy efficient shelter, we too could safely usher the next generations.
Moving beyond "enough"
Unfortunately, as a society, we missed our cue.
Industrial civilization reached "enough" in the 1920s when human need was vanquished. The industrial order went into crisis. What could they do to keep monetary fortunes expanding when productivity had grown to the point where everyone's needs could be met? On top of that, the labour force was campaigning for a 30 hour work week.
The work week had already shrunk, in recent decades, from 80 hours to 70, to 60, to 50, to 40 hours, on the premise that, due to high productivity, work had to be shared for everyone to have jobs. Fewer work hours would allow people to spend more time with their families, to pursue friendships, the arts, sports, education, and to develop parts of themselves that longed for expression. This was the cue that civilization had come of age.
Rather than celebrating our maturity and exploring the many wonders of being alive, the decision makers of that time launched a campaign against shorter hours and turned to advertising to encourage people to want more. After millennium of being content with the clothes, furniture and other goods that people worked hard to produce, an attitude of wastefulness was cultivated.
The fallacy of perpetual growth
By the 1950s this new "Gospel of Consumption" was well established. Retail analysts Victor Lebow described it thus:
"Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. . . We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever increasing rate."
The critical evolutionary cue of "enough" was lost in the flurry of wasteful production that has brought us to the edge of ecological collapse. If we want to resolve climate change, or any of the other problems arising because we are outgrowing our planet, we have to acknowledge our changed circumstances and clearly adopt the goal of sustainability; not as a new style, or add-on, but as the core aspiration for decision making.
The illusion of our growth based economy is that disaster will strike if we stop growing. This is only true because of the way that mutual provision (the economy) is presently structured. Explaining why most of the world uses this system, what the problems with it are, the alternatives available and how to encourage the transformation, would take an entire book. Such is the purpose of my book. I only want to point out here that we have a fundamental choice to make, between growing until we drop and aiming for sustainability.
Just think what human imagination and creativity would come up with if we applied it to making goods durable, rather than engineering their obsolescence; if our educational and persuasive abilities were used to encourage the celebration of what life offers and to affirm each individual's potential, rather than promoting materialism and sewing the seeds of doubt and fear, only to suggest purchases to make the discomfort go away.
We could reduce our collective ecological footprint to the point where there certainly wouldn't be enough work to keep everyone busy all the time. We would then have to share the work that remained, breathe deeply, and learn how to enjoy our selves.
Deciding on direction
Legitimacy is the key to transformation. Imagine yourself, with a pack sac full of tools going into the wilderness with the intent of staying there, by yourself, for two years. How many of us would emerge after two years, in good health? And that is with tools that somebody else made and with a knowledge of how to use them obtained from our culture. Even the words and concepts with which we think, we get from the people around us. Without a society, a person is almost as useless as a computer with no programs. With no social support, survival would be a long shot.
Even in today's arms length economy, we are totally dependent on the products of other people's labour. In earlier times it was very clear that if our tribe or clan were to leave us behind, we would perish. We want, very deeply, to belong. The price of membership is subscription to the value system of one's society.
As long as our society ascribes legitimacy to the goal of producing and consuming ever more, it will be an uphill struggle to avoid over-exploiting natural resources and polluting beyond the limits of tolerance. If the goal of sustainability were wholeheartedly adopted, and was sincerely used as the foundation of decision making, we would, within a decade, be moving so clearly toward a sustainable world that we would no longer be worried for our children and grandchildren.
It is important to turn off unnecessary lights, compost and support local producers. Each step slows the expansion of human impacts on the Earth. More critically, your acts are testimony to the goal of sustainability. When such testimony, reach critical mass, anyone wishing to accelerate growth will feel like a smoker lighting up in a public space. From that point, solutions will emerge everywhere and be implemented in every corner of our world.
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Mike Nickerson is the author of three books on sustainability, including "Planning for Seven Generations" and "Life, Money & Illusion." For more information on the Question of Direction and how to stimulate an appropriate choice, see "The Challenge and the Goal" at http://www.SustainWellBeing.net/
Reprinted from Ottawa's Peace and Environment News
(January-February 2008)
Hi Mike,
Thought I'd start the discussion. For your info, I have only read the article and not your books. What springs to mind is the simplicity/naivety of the solution proposed: adopt the goal of sustainability and within a decade, nothing to worry about... What about the growth of the earth's population? If that would stop, or even better decline, it would give more guarantee of success. But in what way can this be achieved? With the most adopted religions in the world, it seems an impossible task. Or is it a matter of: only the industrialised countries strive to sustainability and that is enough?
Cheers,
Isidora
I agree with what you say and believe rapid global heating is the result of most of us not thinking about what we bring into our homes, where they come from and where they go. Just imagine having to keep all the non-compostable, disposable things we buy inside our homes [ie not taken out of sight, out of mind to the garbage tip]?
A national/global solution which would really have the best and quickest impact environmentally, socially and economically ['triple bottom line'] would be Extended Producer Responsibility[EPR].
Industry [or their importers] must be required by law to take back, or pay the true high price to dump their products at end of life. Only then would it be in industry's interest to re-invent and re-design ZERO WASTE into their manufacturing processes.
Products would be re-designed for long life, re-use, repair, refilling, or closed-loop -recycling. Jobs in services [ie local collection centres and repair centres, refilling and redistribution centres] would be created in preference to sales of crappy, disposable products.
EPR would combat rampant consumerism at the 'top of the pipe' and would thus lead to the rapid decrease of carbon emissions which are caused by the manufacturing and transport and dumping of carbon intensive disposable products, a massive source of dangerous climate change.
It is time to lobby for Extended Producer Responsibility. At the same time we must refuse to accept any kind of manufactured disposable, non repairable items eg: from kleenex tissues, disposable nappies and plastic bags to electronics and cars. While we move towards rapid introduction of renewable energy, the 'transition town' example of resilient communities who grow food locally and adapt existing facilities for future needs will be the model to follow.
Hi Isidora:
In the context of legitimacy having truly shifted to sustainability, the population issue could be resolved by no longer trying to make our (developed) economies grow by exploiting resources and labour of poorer countries.
If we were to make what we know about production available to poorer countries and leave them work to provide food, shelter and other necessities for each other, they would quickly raise to the point that they were not afraid for their old age and could let go of the notion that they need many children to get by in their old age.
Basic personal security, combined with education of women, has brought population growth to a standstill in all developed countries. It could work for the rest, if we get off their backs.
A great start for the developed world would simply be to acknowledge that population is an issue. This would be implicit if sustainability were truly our goal.
Yours, Mike N.
Resolution for 2009: SPEAK OUT loudly, clearly and often
Dear Friends,
In calling for change in our time, great scientists are speaking about what could somehow be true to wealthy and powerful people who prefer that the "business as usual" status quo be maintained. Industrial/big business powerbrokers and their bought-and-paid-for politicians want to keep things going along just as they are going now, come what may for the children and coming generations, for life as we know it, for the integrity of Earth and its environs.
Many voices are needed to support "voices in the wilderness" like those of Jim Hansen and John Holdren, exemplary scientists who have been willing to speak truth to those with the power to make the kinds of necessary change that make belief in a good enough future at least a possibility. Assuring a chance of a good future for the children and for life as we know it is an achievable goal that will lead us to overcome the arrogance and avarice of many too many leaders of my "Not So GREAT GREED GRAB Generation" of elders.
If too many leaders of the family of humanity choose to keep doing precisely the things they are advocating and doing now, and if we in the human community keep getting what we are getting now, then it appears a sustainable world for our children cannot be achieved. By so doing, the limited resources of Earth will be permanently dissipated, its biodiversity massively extirpated, its environment irreversibly degraded and life as we know it recklessly endangered. The current gigantic scale and anticipated growth of per-capita overconsumption of limited resources, global production and distribution capabilities, and absolute human population numbers worldwide are simply, clearly and patently unsustainable, even to the year 2050. Given Earth's limitations as a relatively small, evidently finite and noticeably frangible planet, the projected increases in these currently unbridled consumption, production and propagation activities of the human species could soon lead the human family to come face to face with some sort of colossal ecological wreckage.
Now is the time to speak out loudly, clearly and often about what is true for you. Forget about political correctness and convenience. Let go of economic expediency and greediness. Embrace necessary change rather than waste another day preserving the selfish interests of the small group of rich and powerful people, and their many minions, all of whom are adamantly and relentlessly defending an unsustainable, same old "business as usual" status quo.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176